As Intended
by empty gun
Summary: Written for Bleach Flashfic. Sometimes to make a choice you just gotta know you have one. Hiyori/Urahara


If you took a list of things Hiyori could've theoretically composed about bad stuff, impossible stuff that could've happened to her, around number three was Captain Hikifune leaving her post for another (what could be higher than being the 12th division's captain? what could be _better_) and her surprise and anger she felt was entirely deserved and she _would not stop making a scene _when that actually happened was astounding

Especially when her Captain's replacement was announced as some asshole from the second division. What in the hell did they know about anything in her division? They were just a bunch of murderers and they weren't even out about it like the 11th division. They were murderers in secret. And anything done in secret was the worst kind.

Especially when she saw exactly what kind of asshole from the second division it was. His expression said it all: a curious combination of eternal sheepishness, and most irritating attitude that Hikifune would've referred to as something like "laissez-faire". He looked confused a lot in the beginning and not in an endearing, poor kid sort of way. In a way that made you want to smack the indecision off his face and tell him to take charge about something.

Especially when he turned out to be so goddamned nice.

Which was debatable. Nice guys didn't wear what felt like armor under their robes. Yeah, he'd come from a rough placement in a tough division (prison guard, despite what he said) but that went past expectations. It went to downright paranoid and totally upset all images of him as an incredibly intelligent and somewhat awkward nice guy.

"Nice" guy.

The morning she saw the entire 12th division had been turned into some kind of lab she felt like the already unsteady rug under her feet had been pulled out finally.

And that was just one of those annoying things you couldn't do about life. She was the vice captain and ultimately, no matter how many swift kicks she gave him that got blocked, no matter how much hell she raised, it would be up to him. Nothing like that would've happened with Captain Hikifune.

In many ways she was like her mother, but the perfect kind of mother. She respected her and her decisions and Hiyori should've known that her comfort was only temporary. That's what happened when things got too good. Bad things had to come and just smash them to pieces. That's how life worked.

What a doozy this had been. What a day. What a goddamn disappointment of a day. She kept repeating these words as a mantra.

Nothing had even happened today, it was just like the others.

Hiyori laid her head on the hard, but smooth wood of the porch's beams, her lower teeth biting into her lip, watching the night in front of her. Everything seemed so dark lately it was like she was walking around with glasses with lenses that shaded everything to depression. She wasn't really sad anymore, wasn't really anything. Just ... the glasses feeling. She couldn't get a good look on anything.

Especially not on Urahara. There was something about him that was like water. You couldn't get a good mental grip on him. If you liked him or not. Your interpretations just slid out of your hand.

She had a feeling that if something was going to happen, it should go ahead and happen. She really couldn't take this anymore.

Hiyori thought back on painful nostalgia she left herself think in these moods. Singular and now almost far-away good times in her life.

It seemed in a way nothing could be steady, smooth, happy forever. Something rocky and big had to put a spike in her path. Black cats that passed all the time. Nobody could ever win but not her _especially_.

She hadn't heard his footsteps, or rather maybe she had and ignored them. She was getting real good at that.

But despite, behind her there was a shuffling of feet like someone trying not to be heard and not sneak up at the same time.

"You're a damned former member of the second division," Hiyori said, without turning around. Her voice was slightly muffed by her arms around her face and the position of her lip driven up from the hard wood. "You'd think you'd be better at sneaking up on a person."

There was a nervous laugh that she placed at once as Urahara. "Caught me," he said, standing just behind her.

"Yeah?"

He didn't say anything for a moment, and she could almost hear him cross his arms, uncross them, the swish of his clothing.

Just standing there.

He didn't say anything, but after a moment, he walked around to her and stood beside, not close enough to brush her shoulder, but too close. Being around him right now, in the same room was too close.

And he was not exactly a tall man but towering over her like everyone else did. She didn't feel dwarfed in his shadow, just to use a metaphor. There was practically no light to cast shadows out here. She didn't feel anything she'd thought she'd feel to a captain -- respect, loyalty. She didn't doubt his intelligence, she guessed, or his power, she guessed, but she doubted his damn sense sometimes. Like now.

If he knew she was in such a bad mood, and she always was, why would he come out here alone? It was begging for a kick, but she couldn't even muster the mental strength to tell her legs to move. Not even her eyes.

She didn't look at him at all, but he just stood there for a while, leaning almost like she did, but his chin held aloft, in thought. He'd had to lean down pretty far, though, to have his chin rest.

They were quiet for some time like that, and it wasn't a tense quiet. She basically had gotten used to him just being there. And that was how she had decided to accept it. He would_ just be there. _

It was a little surprising when she heard his voice.

"I never really had to go through anything like that, you know."

Hiyori was silent, but it was quicker to talk and make him go away. She learned this with everyone. Getting what you wanted was give and take in conversations like this. He wanted an answer. "Like what?" she muttered and kept staring ahead. She didn't owe him a look.

He was staring ahead too, but to a different time than she was.

"I always had a captain I felt close to and respected. It never really changed for me."

"Good for you." But she didn't feel like indulging him.

"I don't think it would be right," he said, looking at her now, and she peeled her eyes from the night sky to roll them towards him, the only part of her moving, "to apologize. Most of me feels like I didn't do anything wrong."

She opened her mouth to protest but he said, "But a lot of me does. I don't know how to respond to that part."

Say sorry, was Hiyori's first reaction, but that really didn't make a damn lick of sense. Well, to her it did. But when she tried to look at it from his point of view, only because she predicting his next move, it didn't. And that was hurting and confusing.

And everything he really was.

"Except to say sorry," he replied. "About everything, for you."

"You could apologize for changing everything."

She didn't wait. "You could apologize for not listening or talkin' to me and messing everything up."

She didn't wait again. "You could apologize for not trusting me to do anything."

She waited. "But you don't have to." Blowing a strand of hair from her face, she went on. "Cause I guess you didn't do anything wrong."

Urahara smiled, but it was a sort of sad smile. "We can't hate each other forever."

She looked at him sharply. "You hate me?"

He laughed, and held up his hand. "It seemed the right way to phrase it." He looked away from her, to think. "Maybe we can't be at odds forever."

"I'll decide that," said Hiyori. But not too tough, too angry. It seemed the right way to phrase it.

Urahara nodded slightly and withdrew himself, and she waited until his footsteps had died away to bury her face in her arms, tears in her eyes. Dammit.

What she didn't know was that behind her, watching her outline in the moonlight, slightly messy hair and small frame, Urahara had mouthed he was sorry. He just didn't know for what, specifically, but he knew he was.

What he didn't know was that she hadn't heard him, and that was what he had intended, but that she had felt something change when he walked away, almost a chain breaking. Hers to her old Captain, hers to the immeasurable hatred she felt towards him. She cried for a few minutes just out of not knowing what to do, wiping her nose on her sleeve before she even thought of getting up.

On a list of impossible things, since number three had already happened, and one and two were pretty ridiculous, almost immediately a new number three had came and gone in a matter of minutes: forgiving someone for taking Hikifune's place.

She did and he never needed to know that, but they both did. It didn't really take any apologizing, but, she guessed, a hand reaching out to ask if it was okay, which Hikifune had done constantly. She needed him to reach out, maybe just a finger and brush her anger lightly and just say it was there.

The resolution, and decision to forgive him was always up to her and she had just needed that.


End file.
